Pasadena Audubon General Monthly Meeting

Red Crossbills are finches with beaks that cross at the tips. In North America they have recently been classified into ten types based on their flight calls and may actually represent a number of different species.

PAS member Lance Benner will discuss the biology and adaptations of Red Crossbills, make extensive use of eBird maps to illustrate their geographic distribution, and use recordings and sonograms to demonstrate how to identify their flight calls.

In the past three years Lance Benner has worked with Walter Szeliga, Kathi Ellsworth, and John Garrett, using sonograms to determine the flight call types. This led to the discovery that the Red Crossbills that occur most often in southern California are type 2s and that many of the crossbills in our area during the irruption of 2012-2013 were type 3s.

Join us Wednesday night for what is slated to be a stimulating and educational talk!